Search

Review: Wyse Streaming Manager

Friday, 15 December 2006 by Michel Roth

This is a small review from VNUnet.com on Wyse Streaming Manager: We’re all familiar with the concept of data streaming. Most of us will also have come across thin-client computing, but few will have thought of combining the two. And yet, that’s exactly what Wyse has done to give network managers greater control over the desktops in their organisations.

Called Wyse Streaming Manager (WSM), the aim of the exercise is to do away entirely with local desktop storage and, instead, stream both the required operating system and application software, on demand, from a central server.

The target device will, typically, be a stateless thin client, such as the specially designed Winterm V00 which has no built-in operating system at all. However, any PCs can also be used, even virtual PCs if you want. Either way the software runs locally so, unlike a traditional thin client (where the software is hosted on a shared application server), there are no performance issues or problems when it comes to running multimedia applications.

Security and availability are also enhanced, with no local storage to corrupt, plus there’s fast recovery from hardware or software failure. Other benefits include the ability to use a common software image across the entire organisation and manage any patches or updates centrally.

Once created, operating system images are used by the WSM server for streaming to the Winterm V00 and other devices. These in turn use the PXE (Pre-boot Execution Environment) protocol to boot the images remotely over the Lan with users, who are optionally allowed to choose what they boot from.

Because the software runs locally, performance is mostly dictated by the local processor, and the Via C3 inside the V00 is far from the fastest chip on the block. Despite this, we were surprised at how quick the overall solution was. In fact at times it was hard to tell we weren’t using an ordinary PC.

Read the entire review here.